Prof. Dr. Michel Steinmetz
Head a.i. PSI Center for Life Sciences
Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, Switzerland
My name is Deborah Walter and I work in the group of Prof. Steinmetz at the Paul Scherer Institute in Basel. Our group is interested in engineering proteins required for visual and non-visual light perception in animals. Before using the optoWELL, we either used laser pointers with specific wavelengths or a bright light source with different filters. It was quite complicated to control light intensities this way, especially considering that the intensities of the laser pointers fluctuated with battery life.
We decided to work with the optoWELL as we needed to illuminate at wavelengths matching the absorption maxima of our target proteins. With the optoWELL, it is much easier to reproducibly quantify the effects of illuminating our samples at different intensities and to compare our results with those of our collaborators.